


At The End

by starwalker42



Series: Sortis (orig. on FF.Net) [7]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s05e01-02 Redux, F/M, Mentions of Cancer, Moby Dick - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25449874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starwalker42/pseuds/starwalker42
Summary: A goodbye, a book, and hope.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: Sortis (orig. on FF.Net) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745140
Kudos: 14





	At The End

**Author's Note:**

> It always annoyed me that we never got an MSR happy 'you don't have cancer anymore' scene, so I've made one. Mulder definitely read to Scully at some point. So much fluff and cheesiness, it may not be fit for human consumption. Read at your own risk.

TRINITY HOSPITAL, WASHINGTON, October 1997

I can't think of what to say to Mulder. How to say goodbye. We never say goodbye, ever, and in that sense it's going to be harder to find words for him than it was for Mom and Bill. They've gone to rest, now, because they know as well as I do that they can't do anything more than wait until it's over, which won't be long now. My head aches constantly. I feel light headed every time I move. This is it, I'm at the end of the line. I'm dying.

Of course, I've had a while to adjust to this new reality, and it's why I managed to say goodbye to my family in the first place. But Mulder4's going to be here any minute- he rang as soon as he was out of the hearing- and it may be the last time I ever see him. There's no way I could ever prepare for that, not even with all the time in the world.

A nurse comes in. She gives me that same sympathetic smile I've become so sick of, and I want to scream at her. I don't want lies and fronts and false promises anymore. I want the truth. I want them to tell me without hiding or shying away from it all.

"Dana, you have a visitor."

I raise my eyes.

"Hey, Scully."

My heart and my mind calm. He takes my hand, sits by my side, and my world feels upright again.

xXx

We don't talk for long. There's nothing we know how to say.

Instead, he ends up on my bed, and I'm lying with my cheek on his chest, against the beat of his heart, listening to him read words one hundred and fifty years old that I already know too well. Mom brought the book for me, but I can't read anymore- it hurts my head and my eyes too much.

"' _Delight is to him- a far,far, upward and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot in heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die_.'"

His voice breaks before he can stop it as he reads the next line. After a moment, he swallows and keeps going, one hand in my hair.

"' _I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own_.'"

He hesitates again- I tighten my grip on him, and feel those three words at my lips before I can stop them.

The door opens.

I look up- it's Doctor Zuckerman.

He doesn't seem surprised or worried by Mulder's presence- I wonder if they extend visitor privileges for dying patients- as he takes a seat next to the bed. Mulder stokes my hair, but otherwise doesn't move, not even straightening or sitting up. I follow his lead and stay put.

"Dana, we'd like to do some more scans."

I close my eyes. I don't want to go back to that room. I thought all that was over, now. Mulder kisses the top of my head, and answers for me.

"Is there any point?"

"The last biopsy indicated a change we weren't expecting. We'd like to check, just in case."

Mulder reads my mind again. "In case of what?"

The doctor pauses. "I'd like to do the tests first. I don't want to give you false hopes."

I shake my head. I'm too tired. I don't want to do all of this again, I just want to leave it all behind me and accept that I'm going to die. They can't treat it, can't remove it, and whatever tiny hope they have is just another lie. The most likely outcome is that the biopsy was wrong, the scans will show nothing has changed, and I will end up in the same place I am now, but even more exhausted.

"Dana, we should try. There's nothing to lose."

"I don't want another scan."

Mulder takes a deep breath and speaks softly to me. "He's right. It's worth a try."

"I'm too tired, Mulder."

"I know. I know. But it'll be, what, twenty minutes?" he asks Dr Zuckerman. "Then we'll come back here and we can find out what Ishmael gets up to next."

He's trying to make me smile. I don't want to remind him I know the story of _Moby Dick_ of by heart anyway, so another reading isn't going to change much. But he sounds so hopeful. And I know that if I don't have the scan, and I die later, he'll never let go of the 'what if'. I owe him this.

I shift and give a nod to Dr Zuckerman. "Okay."

xXx

It's not difficult to lie still in the tunnel. The machine whirs and beeps around me, and I close my eyes until it's done. A nurse helps me into the wheelchair, and takes me back outside, where Mulder's sitting, bouncing his leg.

"Doctor Zuckerman said we could go back now if you want, and wait for the results there."

I shake my head. I know he won't be able to rest with that uncertainty.

"We can wait here."

He takes my hand and I catch him running his eyes over my fingers, my cheekbones, my clavicle. I'm just a shell now, so different from how I was even two months ago. I hope Mulder will remember me as I was when I was healthy, and not like this. Tears escape from his eyes and roll down his cheeks. I want to hold him, tell him it's okay, but it isn't my role anymore.

His voice is weak and cracked with emotion when he speaks. "Scully, I-"

Doctor Zuckerman steps into the waiting room, and his expression immediately shows it's not something that can wait.

"The scan… Dana, we have to tell you that... the scan found no trace of your cancer."

Mulder and I both take a moment to process that.

"Are you sure?" Mulder asks, a flicker of the old levity coming back into his voice.

"The biopsy showed similar results. We've checked multiple times, and… would you like to see it for yourself?"

Of course, he knows I'm a doctor. He knows I can read my own PET scans. That I have to, in order to believe what he's telling me.

I check, double check, triple check everything on the screen. I put more focus into reading it then I have done with anything for the past few weeks. Everything checks out- apart from the distinct lack of a tumour in the centre of my skull.

Cancer can't just disappear. It doesn't work like that. But I can't dispute the science, the hard evidence. It's gone.

"How is that possible?"

My voice sounds weak to my own ears. I feel like I might collapse from the shock of this news, and Mulder, ever ready, grips my shoulder.

"We don't know," Doctor Zuckerman sighs. "We've never seen anything like it... it defies all logical explanation."

I know Mulder and I are thinking the same thing: _was it the chip?_

And I know only I am thinking: _was it God?_

I start to realise what it all means. I am alive. I will still be alive tomorrow, the next day, next week. I can eat and read and listen to music and sit in rental sedans in backwater towns in the middle of nowhere listening to Mulder wax lyrical about cryptids and conspiracy theories, and I will no longer be woken at two in the morning by blood on my pillow or a hammering pain in my head.

I'm going to live.

"Does this..." Mulder swallows, as if he can't bear to even voice the possibility. "Does this mean she's going to be okay?"

"We can't call it yet, but, well, it appears that way so far." He squats in front of the wheelchair and smiles. "Dana, I'm delighted to tell you your cancer is in remission."

If he says anything else I don't hear it. Mulder has his arms around me and I'm clinging back to him, eyes squeezed shut against tears. He's crying, his face buried in my neck, and I can hear him whispering something. My heart pumps with his, telling him _I'm here, I'm here, I'm not going._ He finally draws back and kisses my forehead for a long, long moment. I'm too happy to feel even the slightest self-conscious.

And when he presses his forehead to mine and whispers to me, I forget there's anyone else in the room at all.

" _Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to you_."


End file.
